“It appears you are truthful in this,” the leader said. “You are not of this world. Then where are you from and why are you here?”
“I told you,” Blake said. “We’re explorers. We only ever come in peace. We want no trouble.”
“And you just go wherever you want when you explore?” the leader asked. “You think because you are not from here, the laws of restricted areas do not apply to you.”
“We did not know it was restricted,” Blake said. “It was not locked, and we observed it had been there for some time. I can see it belongs to your people, however, and I apologize for our intrusion.”
“How did you arrive here?” the leader asked. “You did not come on a ship, and according to our instruments, you were just there.”
“Our ship was in orbit,” Blake said, thinking quickly. “When we explore, our ship teleports us to the surface of the planet, and then leaves to check on other explorers.”
“What if you should run into problems while … exploring?” the leader asked.
“It will return and teleport us back,” Blake said. “We are tracked by our biosignatures which, as you observed, are different from everyone else on the planet.”
“And if you were to die here?” the leader asked. “How would that affect your exploration and subsequent pickup?”
“There is always that chance when we come to a new world,” Blake said. “When that occurs, and our biosignatures are no longer detected, the planet is quarantined from our race for a time.”
“I would be very interested to know more about this teleportation technology,” the leader said, which did not surprise Blake at all.
“Unfortunately, we’re not engineers,” Blake said. “It is possible that relations could be opened between our peoples. We have no problem sharing our knowledge with other space-faring species.”
“You just need to stay alive,” the leader noted.
“That would be it,” Blake said. The leader stared at him, though it was hard to determine its thoughts behind the reptilian face. Blake decided to try to gain a little more information. “I would be interested to know more about you. We’ve never encountered your race before.”
The leader eyed him suspiciously. “Why would you care to know more about us?”
“Just the knowledge,” Blake said. “We are here to explore and learn, and you certainly represent something new for us. Where do you come from? What did happen to that ship out there? What brings you to this planet?”
“I do not care for questions,” the leader said. “They annoy me, and you do not want me to be annoyed.” The wall around Blake reformed into six spikes which curved around his body and centered directly above his heart where they stopped just short of touching the cloth of his overcoat. Michelle gasped and hyperventilated. Blake remained calm.
“I certainly would not wish to annoy you,” Blake said. “Curiosity is a weakness of mine. I withdraw my questions.”
“Very wise,” the leader said.
“Would it be unreasonable to ask how to address you?” Blake asked.
“That is reasonable, for it is not beneath us to allow our prey to know who has subjected them,” the leader said. “This you can take with you.
“I am Highmark Pyrhinia of the Second Fleet of Perisi, our home planet,” Pyrhinia said, “We are the Kursas, and unlike the local species, the male Kursas are the weaker gender, only useful for ground labor and reproduction as our females can take flight and therefore, lead. However, despite what your species considers strength, I find both of your genders to be equally useless, but simple enough to distinguish both due to your relative size and basic anatomical differences.”
“Highmark Pyrhinia, we are honored to have met you,” Blake said.
“I will keep you alive until your ship returns,” Pyrhinia said, “but you will not see it again. If they can teleport through these walls, then you will still never see your home. Non-Kursas lifeforms are not worthy of survival and must be destroyed. We will, however, be happy to assimilate your teleportation technology before killing your crew.” She left the room and told the escorts as she left, “Take them to a holding chamber.”
As the wall withdrew the shackles and released them, their escorts stepped forward surrounding them once more and led them through the ship to an area consisting of an open room where they were forced into a corner.
The escorts stepped back, and bars emerged from the floor and ceiling to trap them before the guards left them alone. With no door lock to pick and no electronic locking mechanism present, Blake had no idea how they were going to get out of this one.
CHAPTER FOUR
Blake, Perry, and Michelle were not happy about their situation, but they were grateful that they were still together. The Kursas guards had brought them to a cell that contained them using the reformable metal, meaning it had no true door or lock on which Blake could use his electronic lockpick, and it was completely bare giving them nowhere except the floor to sit and nothing they could use to escape. Despite this, they figured it could be worse.
“I suppose they could have put us out there with the rest of their prisoners,” Perry said. “We could have been on their wall of death.”
“Don’t call it that,” Michelle said. “It’s horrible.”
“No one is condoning this,” Blake assured her. “I am also grateful we’re not out there, though.”
“What are we going to do?” Michelle asked.
“Not sure yet,” Blake said.
“Do you really think they’ll wait until the starship Enterprise does come to pick us up?” Perry asked.
“No idea,” Blake said. “I figured I had to tell her something that she would find more believable than the truth, and possibly intrigue her to the point that she would not have us executed.”
“It apparently worked,” Perry said. “Mostly.”
“We’re not dead,” Blake said.
“We are trapped, though,” Perry pointed out.
“Well, though there is no door,” Blake said. “Perhaps whatever this malleable metal is can work for us. I’d wager it is controlled mentally using whatever those devices or implants they were wearing on their heads. Did you notice?”
“I noticed,” Michelle said. “What kind of monsters are these?”
“I had hoped for something better when we first saw them,” Blake said. “I would never call them monsters on their appearance alone, but their actions are deplorable.”
Blake pulled his scanner out of his pocket and evaluated the metal in the bars and floor around them.
“How long do you think they’ll wait?” Perry asked.
“Well, I did not give a time frame for our ship to return,” Blake said, “so I’d wager she’ll wait at least a couple of days before demanding a return date.”
“How long do you think she’ll accept?” Michelle asked.
“I’ve thought about that,” Blake said. “I figure if I go for too long, she’ll get suspicious, but I also don’t want to short-change us. If we’re not out of here in a month, I’ll be very concerned, so that’s what I’d say.”
Perry and Michelle nodded, unable to add any more to it. Blake went back to the nature of the metal around them. The scanner came back as inconclusive in regards to the construction of it meaning that it was more than just metal, which seemed likely. The floor was a combination of the malleable metal and the standard non-moldable variety which also held true of the ceiling.
He changed the frequency of the scan to try to determine what kind of signal controlled the nature of the metal’s structure. As it was controlled mechanically using mental interpretation, there had to be some sort of measurable signal to either change its structure or break the structure down. Nothing appeared to be acting on the metal at present, so he assumed whatever controlled it worked upon it to change its form, and then released it causing it to solidify into a permanent state again. He was impressed.
He lowered his scanner and touched the bars. They we
re solid to the touch, and when he tried to shake them, they were unmovable. Whatever the metal was, it was strong. He guessed it had to be since all of the humanoids on the walls of death, as Perry called them, were unable to escape. Their panels being fully changeable meant that each person out there was stuck in a customized cage made just for them, but easily undone should their captors wish to dispose of them. To make matters more disturbing, the Kursas could run a lethal charge through the metal to atomize anyone on it. It certainly put them on unsure footing regardless of where they went.
“Well?” Michelle asked.
“There are no signals to monitor in here,” Blake said. “I don’t know how it is controlled yet, but I’m sure that we would need to send something to it to reform the bars and get out.”
“Even if we got out of here,” Perry said, “we’d have no chance of escaping this ship. It’s a labyrinth to begin with, not to mention loaded with guards, and who knows how much of this metal they’ve got hanging around. We could walk across an intersection only to find ourselves glued to the floor.”
“I’ve thought of that,” Blake said, “but I don’t have an answer yet. If I can control the metal, then we have a chance against that, at least.”
“And how can you control it?” Michelle asked.
“I don’t know,” Blake shrugged. “I certainly can’t do it with this.” He held up his scanner. “It was a stupid idea. I think I’d be happy to be able to disable it, which is about as good as I can get if I can send the right signal to it.”
He left the bars and walked to the middle of the room where he sat down. He held his scanner in front of him, staring at the screen and the various options it held.
“The signal is out there,” he said. “I just have to isolate it.”
Time passed as Blake kept tapping options on his scanner to discover how the Kursas manipulated the metal in the ship, and while he worked, Michelle and Perry sat quietly, not knowing what more to say at this point. She was frightened, and there was nothing he could do to better it. The only hope they clung to was that Blake insisted that the Maze would not have brought them here to die. There was no guarantee he could offer of this, of course, but the hope was better than nothing.
“I’ve got to talk about something while we’re waiting in here,” Michelle said to Perry, breaking the silence after thirty minutes of waiting for Blake to do something. He continued to stare at his scanner, ignoring them. “What was it that brought you into the Maze?”
“I guess we have never gotten a chance to chat about that, have we?” Perry noted. “I never asked about your story either.”
“No, but I asked you first,” Michelle said.
“She has you there,” Blake commented without looking up.
“I think I told you I stole some guns before they were stolen from me over a good beating in a back alley,” Perry said.
“Yes, you said that,” Michelle replied, “but no one just does that. I remember something about drugs and getting kicked out of your apartment, but those first days were a bit of a blur to me.”
“The year was 1983,” Perry said with a little dramatic flair. “I think it was during the summer. It’s been awhile. Anyway, my troubles actually started on October 17, 1967, when my father, who was just a grunt in the 1st Infantry Division at Fort Riley was killed during the Battle of Ong Thanh. For years, that was the most history I knew because I’ll never forget it.
“Bad went to worse when my mom met a guy who was also in the 1st Infantry but was injured and given a purple heart and an honorable discharge. That wasn’t bad, of course, but the thing was that he was bitter over being a security guard because the police academy rejected his application.”
Perry leaned forward to lend an ominous tone to his next point. “Every single year he applied.
“So bitterness was an understatement,” Perry continued. “Whatever his injury was … and no, they never told me – he just had,” Perry accentuated with air quotes, “an injury.” He continued, “This injury prevented his acceptance onto the local police force. There were too many other war candidates without this mysterious affliction. And since I was not the most pleasant of teenagers, I deliberately harassed him. As you can imagine, a man as bitter as he didn’t much appreciate some punk kid giving him crap over his lifelong failures, so more than once, we had a knock-down drag-out much to the disapproval of my mother.
“School was ok, and I was an ok student. Never the top of the class, but never a flunkie either. Not until I discovered my new best friends. I can’t even remember which drug started the path I ended up on. Probably marijuana. I know I rolled my share of joints back then.
“It was the escape I needed. Well, I thought I needed. I was fifteen when I started and not dealing with the stress of my step-dad was awesome. When I was seventeen, the friends I had gotten the drugs from decided they were going to drop out of school and start their own lives without our, as we called them, stupid parents. I didn’t even leave a note. Someone had been driving an old 1965 Rambler, so we all piled in, and set out for New York.”
“Where were you from originally?” Michelle asked.
“Oh, Manhattan, Kansas,” Perry replied. “Right outside of Fort Riley. We were going to Manhattan, New York.”
“Make for the coast,” Blake chimed in.
“Oh, shut up,” Perry said. “You don’t even know. Stupid future boy with your crazy transportation.”
“When is he from?” Michelle asked.
“2521,” Blake replied.
“Whose story do you want?” Perry asked.
“No, go on,” Michelle encouraged.
“Ok then,” Perry said. “For the record, at that time, no one was going to the coast because we were still kind of freaked out over Jaws. But we got it into our heads that we were going to Manhattan in New York. Problem was we never got there. Turns out having no money is a problem when your car requires gas to function, and New York is a long way from Kansas.”
“Not a problem in 2521,” Blake said, still not looking up from his scanner.
“No one asked you either,” Perry said. “Anyway, we got as far as Virginia when we discovered that feeding five people and a gas guzzling Rambler doesn’t get you far when you only had, like, fifty bucks between the lot of you.
“The short version after that was someone called home, and all of us got ourselves transported back into the thick of so much trouble. I did finish high school, barely, but the irritation over not getting out of Kansas along with the continued beatings of my step-father made me want to leave so badly. I got a job and spent easily half my paycheck on drugs to make the pain go away.
“Don’t feel sorry for me there. I was a complete jerk to my step-father. I would almost say I had it coming because I pushed him, and I dared him, and I provoked him. I did everything short of just telling him to beat the crap out of me, and he obliged.”
“What did your mom do?” Michelle asked.
“Nothing,” Perry replied. “She never saw it. She never saw that side of him at all. Sometimes, I wonder if he was really like that or if I brought it out of him. Around her, he was very kind, and I imagine they were very happy together. I don’t know. I left them when I was nineteen about six months after graduation. I didn’t move far, but far enough to be out of Manhattan and away from them.”
“The next six years were mostly a blur. I had girlfriends. Some lived with me. Some didn’t. They usually left me when I was between jobs and ridiculously high. I had an apartment that I lived in pretty much the whole time until the end. I drifted from one job to another, so my rent was perpetually late, but I always paid it. Still, my landlord got really antsy after awhile especially when he suspected that I had drugs. His suspicions weren’t wrong. To make some extra money, I tried dealing drugs myself. I mean, the guys were making money from me, I figured I’d try to get a piece of that. Well, when my last girlfriend… I don’t even know if she was my girlfriend, but she was living with me sometimes. Anyway
, when she left, she not only stole my car, but she stole the drugs I was supposed to sell. Without my car, I couldn’t go to my regular job, so they fired me. They were looking for a reason to fire me anyway, and not showing up gave them that. Then, my dealer wasn’t buying my story about the girl stealing the drugs. He thought I’d used them, of course, so he wanted the money I owed for that. I was already behind on the rent, but I figured I’d try to get a job close to my apartment.
“It was too little, too late. I went out to try and apply for a job at Safeway, but when I returned, my apartment’s locks were changed. I tried to talk to the landlord, but he gave me the finger. I wanted my stuff, but he told me that my lease agreement allowed them to take possession of everything on the property to make up for back rent and damages. So I had nothing.”
Perry sighed at the memory and shook his head. “I was a mess. No money. No home. Already starting to go through withdrawals. I slept behind the Safeway I had tried to apply to. I went back there the next day to see if I would get the job, but of course, I stank for sleeping outside, so they said no. I just wandered around, not having anywhere to go. I knew I wasn’t going back home. No way in hell was I going to hear about my failure from ex-Vietnam.
“Well, my dealer found out I’d been kicked out of my apartment, and he knew I had no car, so it didn’t take him long to find me. He said he had a deal for me that could square us up and net me a little cash in the process - enough to get my rent up to date. He wanted guns, and as luck would have it, there was a gun store in the neighborhood whose security, he had learned, was a bit lax. He wasn’t going to go in there, but he needed a chump who would. I am that chump.
“He told me what to look for, so I walked in like a prospective customer to check it out. I saw the guns he had described behind the counter and casually asked the clerk about them. Of course, I was a vagrant in their eyes, so the guy kicked me out.
“I had all day to think about it. I sat behind that shop and imagined the money in my hand. What other options did I have? Find the girl? No, she was long gone, I was certain. Find some other job? Safeway had already turned me down because I was out on the street, so there was no way I’d get anything else. I didn’t know where any shelters were because I had never thought about it. This would give me some money and a chance to get back on my feet. I knew if I was quick, I could get in and out before the cops showed up even if they had a working system. My guy said they didn’t.
The Kursas Page 3